Three years after he helped found the Situationist International, Debord and other members began to drive the group away from its artistic origins and toward a political critique of capitalist society—excluding some old members in the process. With some evident revolutionary zeal, he writes to fellow members Maurice and Rob Wyckaert about the spread of the group’s influence and how well Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, a founding member, took his expulsion.
Good news: I don’t have a toothache any more. After twelve days, it’s a relief…
Saturday [13 August 1960]
Dear Maurice and Rob,
Thank you for your card. It’s the top of the range.
I sent various items of printed matter to place de la Justice recently. I hope that you will receive them.
Send me your exact future address in Alsemberg. I think that it is the permanent address that we should use for our activities in Belgium (and even for the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism)?
Next week I’m coming to see Attila in Barneville.
I’m also thinking of stopping in Brussels on the way to London (unless I don’t have time). I don’t know what arrangements Asger has made for the conference. He wrote me that he would see to everything in September!
I propose that Maurice send me here for the maximum number of usable elements for his biographical note. I will do it when I get back.
Pinot took his expulsion very well. He declared himself very moved and happy that we were allowing him to leave us “in friendship.” He must have feared that Asger intended to exact reprisals from art dealers…He didn’t protest the fairness of our decision in any way. I know this through the Italians who visited Asger, and through a letter from Giors, who was in Paris, but whom I obviously did not have time to meet. His letter was very friendly all the same.
Asger has been very enthusiastic since this purge (with the seriousness of the charge having grown more certain since then), and since the discovery of topology.
Do you know topology? I already sent you the questionnaire. It seems that a familiarity with topology is required in order to see how right the SI had been!
In Canada some ten adventurers gathered around Patrick Straram just published the first issue of a journal entitled Cahier pour un paysage à inventer, which is more than ¾ situationist, merely by virtue of the fact that our texts are abundantly reprinted therein. I will send the journal to you as soon as possible. They offer it as a point of departure for an as yet unspecified action common action. One of them will be coming to Europe toward the fall. One of them will be coming to Europe toward the fall. So we have reached other continents, and await the next planets.
See you soon. Regards,
CONGO FOR THE CONGOLESE!
UNESCO FOR THE SITUATIONISTS!
Guy
Stuart Kendall, John McHale. “Correspondence: the Foundation of the Situationist International (June 1957-August 1960).” Semiotext(e). 2 Jul. 2009. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/correspondence, Web. 20 July 2009.
FURTHER READING
View Guy Debord’s 1959 short film, On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time, here.
Read an essay on Guy Debord’s engagement with the “situation” of fiction by th-rough.edu here.
Read an essay on Guy Debord and his relationship with film aesthetics written by the film website, Senses of Cinema, here.